The Liar's key

TWENTY-SIX

When you emerge into Piatzo plaza you remember what summer is this far south. In the alleyways, shaded and angled to channel the breeze, you get just a hot breath of it, a reminder of the violence that waits for you, but step into Piatzo at noon in high summer and it hits you like a fist. Suddenly I wanted a hat, even one of those ridiculous confections the moderns sport. Head bowed against the onslaught from above, eyes narrowed against the glare reflected from broad and pale paving slabs, I strode out toward the Central Bank debtor prison on the far side.

From the front the place looks like a genteel residence, architecturally fit for its surroundings and meriting a place facing out into one of Umbertide’s most famed plazas. They tell me that in winter the square becomes a place where well-heeled citizens gather to socialize, hawkers sell expensive tit-bits, and renowned orchestras put on performances. Little wonder then that debtors with sufficiently generous friends and family often choose to take up residence in the apartments at the front of the prison, waiting there the weeks, months, or perhaps decades required either for their fortunes to rally sufficiently to pay what’s owed, and the interest upon it, or for their reserves to dwindle to the point where they begin the slow and inevitable migration toward the hidden rear of the building.

We came up to the front doors, palatial things, gilded and ornate. First you pay the doorman. Everything costs in the debtor cells and only the rent is added to the slate. If you want a bed, want to eat, want clean water, you pay. If you can’t pay you sell what you have. The servants in the front apartments are selling their services. Further in they sell their clothes, their bodies, their hair, their children. And at the far end, emptied from tiny and cramped cells, come the corpses, skeletally thin, naked, sold to feed pigs, the credit removed from the final summation of their debt.

I knew these things because the debtors’ prisons, and there are many in Umbertide, seemed my likely destination should my adventures on the commodities markets turn sour. It’s not in my nature to over-investigate the downsides of any vice I entertain, and gambling has always been to the fore of my weaknesses. I do, however, like to explore all the escape routes, and that necessitated finding out more than a little about establishments like the one run by Firenze Central Bank. The conclusion of my study was-don’t get caught.

That conclusion held me there on the steps, the sun pounding down on my head, my shadow puddled black about my feet, Ta-Nam impassive behind me. I’d come here to buy freedom-but what had led me here? A slip of parchment. A note given to me by a man whose services were for sale to anyone with coin or credit. Given to me on the day the banks had refused my paper.

“It would be an irony if I came here thinking to help an inmate and found I was handing myself into custody.” I said it loud enough for Ta-Nam to hear but he made no answer. I found myself suddenly dry mouthed-the city rising about me like a grasping hand. Running was the only thing I wanted to do. Forget the plan. Forget the diamonds. Drop the damn gold if need be. Just run. The visions that had haunted me for three nights returned to swim before my eyes-Hennan wasting away, rotting like fruit left in the sun.

I turned to face Ta-Nam. He stood immobile, sweat gleaming on ebony arms, watching everything, even me.

“I’ve got a. . a child under my care in there.” Silence. “I should go in and see him released.” Silence. “It. . it could be dangerous.” This wasn’t me. Friends were ballast, to be cast overboard if you start riding low in the water. Not you, I’d told Hennan, not you, other friends-but of course I’d meant him too. And yet I couldn’t quite turn away. Perhaps the dreams scared me.

Ta-Nam regarded me with the same eloquent silence, no hint of judgment in him, as if he’d carry me to the city limits in his arms if I ordered it, and set me on a fast horse without the least reproach. Damn him. I tried to focus on what Snorri would do to me if he discovered I’d left Hennan behind. Going in felt slightly more sensible when set against the background of the Norseman twisting my arms off.

• • •

In the prison foyer three heavyset but impeccably dressed men-in-waiting took the surrender of Ta-Nam’s chrome-steel daggers and my own stiletto, its hilt tastefully decorated with blood-rubies from the Afrique interior. The largest of them then approached us with some plasteek device almost like a gaming racquet but without the catgut stringing required to hit the ball.

“What is it?” I stepped sharply behind Ta-Nam, prepared to let him earn his contract-price for once. The moderns are fearsome keen on their Builder artefacts, scavenged from time-vaults across the empire: it’s hard to find a modern with any significant holdings who doesn’t have some device from before the Day of a Thousand Suns, a fone perhaps so they can talk to God-probably to complain-or some nameless thing of wires and parts and glass. Corpus kept some strange machine of rustless silver-steel, two interlocking tear-drop cages that rotate each through the other when a handle higher up the device is turned. He would hold it up on the trade floor, spinning the cages when seeking to place an order. I peered at the approaching footman. “I don’t want that. . thing. . near me!”

“It finds concealed weapons, sir.” The thug smiled reassurance at me as if I were some country squire. He waved the device across Ta-Nam’s thick arms and down across his front.

“Well, I don’t like it!” And I didn’t, but when he’d finished with the sword-son he came my way waving his bat. The thing started squealing the moment it drew near me, an unearthly tone, a pure note, higher than any castrato ever reached. That set all three of them advancing on me, grim as you like, and ready to manhandle me despite my station.

It soon transpired that the Builders’ toy considered gold to be a weapon-which to be fair it is in many regards-and so, to the bemusement of the staff, I had to strip three hundred and eighty double florins from about my person and let them rifle with greedy fingers through the three thousand and twenty-six additional coins in my case.

“You’re sure you wouldn’t like to leave this with us during your visit, sir?” The thug seemed keen to take charge of my funds. “We’ve had riots here over a dropped silver. Taking this much money in there. . it’s not sensible.”

“Not safe.” The second thug, younger, his eyes unable to leave my case.

“Not sane.” The last and smallest of them, though still a solid chunk of muscle, and seemingly angered by the sight of such riches in a place of debt.

“It’s all well hidden.” I frowned at the heap of ribbons between whose double layers the spare florins were sewn. “Well it was before you laid hands on me.” I picked up a loose end and started to wrap the length of it, chinking, about my waist and torso. “Ta-Nam will be more than sufficient to protect my interests, with or without his knives.” I dropped that last slowly, letting the words hammer in the fact that the sword-son could end them where they stood. Moreover he could do so with a clean conscience since Umbertide law lays the crime at the feet of any man who can be shown to have paid for its commission. By signing themselves over to contract the sword-sons were virtually immune to charges of criminality, as much a device as a sword or clockwork soldier, and no more guilty.

Despite their avarice the guards made no attempt to take my gold. Ownership and debt were a religion in Umbertide and held in no place more sanctified than in the debtor prisons. The whole prison was essentially a device to bleed dry those that fell into its clutches-to bleed them in a highly structured and entirely legal manner. In the midst of such institutionalized theft on so grand a scale individual thievery could not be tolerated in any degree. Only by strict adherence to the rules of the theft could the illusion of it being lawful and civilized be maintained.

• • •

Our manicured thug took us through the more salubrious quarter of the prison and handed us over to a cell monkey who would lead us the rest of the way. I had to pay him too.

“98-3-8. . what was the rest?” He walked ahead of us swinging an unlit lantern.

“98-3-8-3-6,” I said, squinting at my paper. We’d gone past the high windows, past the lantern-lit corridors-the wooden doors punctuating the walls had given way to barred gates and the oil lamps smoked so as to set you coughing. “What does it mean?”

“Means he came in this year, ’98, not so long ago, less than a month, and that he’s poor as shit ’cos he’s about as far back as this place goes.”

I glanced through the next set of bars into an empty cell, stone floor strewn with dirt, a bare bench, a heap of rags for a bed. An eye glittered amid the rags and I realized it wasn’t a bed.

The stink intensified as we went on, a raw mix of sewage and rot. The passage became more tunnel than corridor and I had to bend to keep from scraping my head. Lone candle stubs, balanced amid pools of wax, broke the darkness here and there. Elsewhere things moaned and rustled in the blind and fetid spaces behind the bars and I was glad not to see. Our guide lit a taper at the last of these candles and we followed the glowing ember of it into hell.

“Here we are 3:6.” The man lit his lantern, reintroducing us to the sweaty and lumpen topology of his naked torso. We stood in a square and low-roofed chamber from which eight arches gave onto largish cells, each arch walled with grimy rusting bars. The creatures within turned their faces from the light as if it hurt their eyes. Most were naked but I couldn’t tell if they were men or women. They seemed uniformly grey, smeared with filth, and gaunt beyond the point that one might imagine a person could be reduced to and yet live. And the smell of the place. . it held less of the sewer and more of rot. . the kind of stink that wouldn’t quit your nostrils for days after. The smell of death-death without hope.

“What’s the last bit?”

“What?” I looked back at the jailer.

“The last bit. The case number.”

“Oh.” And I held up the roll of parchment to read it off.

We approached the arch that bore the legend “VI” upon its keystone.

“Get back!” The cell monkey ran his baton along the bars and the debtors shrank away, cowering like dogs accustomed to beating. “The new one! Show me the new one!”

The grey crowd parted, edging to the margins of their cell, bare feet shuffling through wet filth. The shadows retreated with them, the lantern revealing a stone floor strewn with litter.

“Where-” And then I saw him. Lying on his side, back toward us, his spine a series of bony knobs beneath pale skin stretched painfully across them. I’d seen dead beggars in the gutters of Vermillion with more meat on them after a night with the dogs chewing at their limbs.

“Eight-one-six-three-two!” the guard bellowed it as if he were on a parade ground. “On your feet!”

The harshness of that shout made me wince, me who would be walking out of here burdened with gold and with a meal whose price might buy one of these souls’ freedom turning sour in my belly. I reached out a quick hand to the man’s bicep. “Enough. Open it.” Teeth gritted.

“Costs two hexes to unlock in the Dregs,” he said without rancour.

I fished in my pocket for something as small as his fee, bringing up three of the six-sided coppers after an age of fumbling. “Do it.” My hand trembled though I wasn’t sure what I was angry about.

The cell monkey made a show of counting through his keys and eventually set the heaviest bit of iron on his ring into the lock before us. He beat the bars once more, setting my teeth on edge, and drew back the gate.

“You’re sure that’s him?” The figure held nothing familiar about it. Ribs standing out where they curved toward his spine, hair dark with grime. I could pick this thing of skin and bones up in my arms and stand without effort. All those miles we’d trekked south. . bringing us out of the northern wastes had delivered him to this?

I handed my case to Ta-Nam and stepped inside, painfully aware of the debtors to either side, hands hooked into what seemed like talons. The stench of them made my eyes water and caught at my throat. Five paces brought me to the figure. I kicked a patch of flagstone cleaner and went to one knee.

“It’s me. . Prince J-It’s me Jalan.”

The slightest twitch, a hunching, as if the bones all squeezed that bit closer together beneath the skin.

“Are you-” I didn’t know what to say. Was he all right? He didn’t look all right.

I reached out a hand and turned him toward me. Bright eyes watched me from beneath matted hair.

“Hennan.” I ran my arms under the boy and careless of the dirt drew him to me. He proved even lighter than he looked. I stood without effort and turned to the gate, and found it closing as I faced it.

“No!” I lurched forward, still carrying the boy, boots slipping on the muck, but the jailer turned the key before I made it halfway. He offered me a grin through the bars. My sword-son stood unmoving in the middle of the central chamber. I watched him, flabbergasted for a moment, before realizing that technically the jailer hadn’t offered me any harm.

“Ta-Nam! Get me out of here!”

The sword-son stayed where he was. A heartbeat stretched into an age, and my stomach curled into a tight and heavy ball. Hennan started to feel like all the weight in the world.

“Ta-Nam! A sword-son never breaks his contract!” There aren’t many truths in the world, and fewer certainties. Death, taxes, and not much else. But the loyalty of a sword-son was a thing of legend. .

“You broke our contract, my prince.” Ta-Nam bowed his head as though the deed sorrowed him. “You purchased me with paper. A man came to me a day ago and paid what was asked for my next contract though I told him I didn’t know when you would release the option on my service. I further told him that I would have to report our conversation and agreement to my master. At that point he explained I had no master as the Butarni bank would no longer honour your script since the Central Bank suspended your credit over charges of tax evasion. Without a master the contract I had just agreed became active.”

“What charges?” Corpus had said the same thing. “There haven’t been any damn charges. And what bastard do you work for now?”

Ta-Nam lifted his head to meet my gaze. “I work for Corpus Armand of the House Iron.” He reached into the small pack at his side and withdrew two wooden scroll cases. “The charges were delivered this morning. I received them in your name and kept them from you on Corpus’s instruction.”

“That’s my money!” I gestured toward the case in his hand. It didn’t seem to burden him as it did me.

“I told Corpus you had a case full of gold-”

“You can’t tell! Sword-sons don’t tell!” All around me heads lifted, turned toward the case in Ta-Nam’s grip. Pale and dirty hands gripped the bars across the mouths of the seven other arches, bright eyes staring.

“We had no contract, my prince.” Ta-Nam bowed his head once again and turned to go. Even in the depths of my despair I noted that he hadn’t dragged me out to strip the double florins from my body. Corpus hadn’t known about those and the sword-son had no more malice in him than any sharp edge that cuts both ways.

“Crap,” I said.

Ta-Nam and the cell monkey turned to go, throwing us into deep shadow. Step by step the light left us, darkness stealing in from all sides, the debtors advancing with it.

“Crap.” It bore repeating.

Hennan, who had seemed so light, grew heavier still in my arms. A sense of betrayal rose through me and the loss of Snorri settled on me suddenly and from nowhere. Friendship felt somehow more valuable than unbreakable contracts. Whatever his faults the northman would never have stood there and let this happen to me.